Broken Space Adding more POIs was good, but new locations aren’t enough to solve the game’s biggest replay problem

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Broken Space Adding more POIs was good, but new locations aren’t enough to solve the game’s biggest replay problem

Star fieldof approach to points of interest, or POIs, has been a point of contention since its initial launch. At the moment, Star field has several handcrafted POIs that are randomly placed on planets. Your loot and enemy placements are randomly generated to make them more distinct. However, as many players have discovered, these POIs end up feeling incredibly repetitive, even with the loot and enemies changing each time. They never feel unexpected, mysterious, or challenging because players always approach them in the same way.

In fact, POIs end up being one of the worst parts of Star fieldespecially since players have discovered that the same data lists, corpses, and lore entries are appearing in multiple POIs. Starfield: Shattered Space I tried to solve the problem with new POIs, but it wasn’t enough. However, there is an obvious solution to Starfield’s POI issue that could make all fans happy.

Shattered Space’s new POIs don’t solve the problem

They are a band-aid solution

Starfield: Shattered Space introduced a number of new POIs for players to discover, adding a bit to the rather limited pool currently in the game. These new POIs are a valuable addition, especially because they reduce the enormous amount of repetition players experience every time they venture onto a non-story planet looking for things to do. However, while everyone is grateful to have more content to discover, Broken space new POIs are not enough to fix Starfield’s biggest problem with repetition.

More than anything, adding additional POIs to Star field looks like a band-aid solution. It’s a temporary solution that will momentarily remove the feeling of repetition until players discover all the new POIs and start seeing them over and over again. Adding new POIs doesn’t solve the root of the problem, which is that doing the same content over and over again becomes boring and the game desperately needs procedurally generated content.

As much as people languish in comparisons between Star field and No Man’s SkyIt’s hard not to feel it SNMThe POI approach is handled much more efficiently, as players are always guaranteed something new, even if it is a variant of what they have discovered before. Star field copying and pasting your handful of POIs into your procedurally generated worlds is not enoughespecially when those POIs are not interesting enough. Of course, if Bethesda continues to add more and more POIs, eventually there will be enough to avoid repeats.

Star field Copying and pasting a handful of POIs into your procedurally generated worlds isn’t enough, especially when those POIs aren’t interesting enough.

However, Starfield’s The bugs are making it difficult to invest, and Bethesda has little reason to continue investing in it, especially thanks to its dwindling player base. The chance that Bethesda will create enough unique POIs that players will rarely encounter the same place twice is exceptionally small. Instead, you should create a model similar to Remnant 2 procedural generation that makes your locations modular, rather than handcrafted locations that are repeated ad nauseam.

Modular POIs can make Starfield less repetitive

This would make the Starfield universe feel truly unexpected


A player in Starfield: Shattered Space walking down a dimly lit hallway holding a rifle.

A meaningful solution for Starfield’s the biggest problem would be introducing modular POIs. Starfield’s the current model of copying and pasting artisanal content is not workingmainly because its bloated universe has 1,000 planets for players to explore. While not every planet needs completely new content for players to interact with, especially since Bethesda intentionally created barren planets to create a more realistic universe, there simply aren’t enough unique points of interest to reduce the risk of encountering the same ones over and over again.

Modular POIs would solve this problem, especially if Bethesda created enough unique pieces. Essentially, Star field would draw from a variety of assets and tilesets and assemble some of them in random order, thus creating a new POI. It’s like No man’s sky randomly generated creatures work or how the incredibly immersive world of Remnant 2 is assembled. Modular POIs would help make each one feel unexpectedwhile also making them consistent with the game’s lore. For example, mining stations would still always be similar, but they wouldn’t have the exact same layout every time.

Although fans ask for more handcrafted content for Star fieldIt’s clear now that it simply isn’t the answer. Broken space fully crafted world was not enough to fix the base Star field experience. Even if it was an enjoyable location to explore, fans would still have to return to the repetitive POIs of Starfield’s expanding galaxy. Introducing modular POIs for Star field would fix the base game in a way that Shattered Space never could.

POIs need to actually make sense in Starfield

They need to stop showing up where they don’t belong


A Starfield player jumping towards an enemy in zero gravity.

Another issue that Starfield: Shattered Space What we can’t resolve is that POIs often don’t make sense. They constantly appear on planets they don’t belong on, have possessions in places that don’t make sense – like outdoor seating and food on a toxic planet – and appear multiple times within the same system. POIs are placed almost randomly in Star fieldcreating a completely inconsistent sense of worldbuilding that often breaks any immersion.

In a game like No Man’s SkyIt’s easier to forgive these inconsistencies since absolutely everything is randomly generated. However, Star field is a largely narrative-based game with a more consistent and detailed world. Bethesda put a lot of thought and effort into creating the universe that players explore, so when POIs don’t make sense, it feels like a mistake. Of course, there are many mods that fix Star fieldbut shouldn’t depend on modders to improve the game. Bethesda should have thought of this before launching Star field.

Points of interest have been one of the biggest problems for Star field skeptics since its release, but Bethesda hasn’t corrected them. You can continue to add more and if you add enough it may eventually fix the problem. However, unless you implement some form of modular POIs and fix their random placement to ensure they make sense from a world-building perspective and are not repetitive, Star field It will continue to feel more like a video game and less like an immersive space simulator.

Source: Bethesda Softworks/YouTube, Useful Leadership58/Reddit

Platform(s)

PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S

Released

September 6, 2023

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